


Slip Through Your Fingers

by kerlin



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-03
Updated: 2010-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerlin/pseuds/kerlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A diminishing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slip Through Your Fingers

The call came the way they always had, over the years: relayed through the communications officer and couched in carefully bland yet authoritative words.

Commander Adama will please report to Colonial One for consult with President Roslin.

Adama looked down at the slip of paper in his hand and dismissed the Petty Officer (not Dualla; she was on her third pregnancy leave and anyway far too experienced now to be an errand girl), and found that he could not stop reading and re-reading the message.

Finally, when his silence became conspicuous, he folded the paper carefully down the middle and tucked it into his pocket, feeling strangely weighted down by the ink and pulp.

"Colonel Tigh, you have the watch. I will be on Colonial One."

Saul knew, damn him, and of all the people to be giving him a look like that right now, somehow from Saul it was the worst. CIC was quiet but for equipment hum and the low murmur of conversation, and amidst the everyday noises Saul snapped to full attention and gave him a formal salute.

Adama returned it, fingers lingering at his brow, and looked around CIC with tension coiling in his gut before he turned crisply and walked out.

He took Lee's Viper over to Colonial One for old time's sake, and occupied his mind by making mental notes about the sluggish response of the starboard yaw controls. Something to discuss with his son later. Adama's concentration slipped for a moment and he touched the photograph of young Zach taped to the only free space in the cockpit, just above the rarely used altimeter. He would combine his chidings with a visit to see his grandson and remind himself of why they were all doing this.

Colonial One's docking bay was cluttered with storage containers and he had to exercise fine control to slide the Viper in next to stacked barrels. Billy was waiting for him when he jumped down from the cockpit – no convenient rolling staircases here – and he was looking healthy and happy. Fatherhood and family life agreed with him, even if it deprived Adama of one of his most senior communications officers.

"She wouldn't let me ask for you until…" The young man's voice trailed off, and Adama waved off the necessity of an end to that sentence.

"I understand. How are your daughters?" he asked as they both walked the familiar corridors. Best they all have something else to focus on.

"They're wonderful, sir, thank you for asking," Billy replied, and blushed slightly, as if he were still embarrassed to be discussing this with the commander.

"Hoping this one's a boy?"

"Just that it's healthy, sir." They reached the presidential suite and Billy knocked at the door, pressing his ear to it to hear a response. He apparently received it, and opened the door for Adama to pass by him. "Just ask for me when you've…finished, sir." He cleared his throat and continued. "Thank you for coming, sir."

Adama didn’t respond, but reached up and placed his hand on Billy's shoulder, gripping tightly as if to anchor himself, studying the younger man. So tall and young and strong, exactly what would keep them all going in spite of themselves. Billy and Dualla, Lee and Kara, their bright beautiful children.

He was far too old to be getting sentimental like this.

Without a word, he ducked past Billy into the suite.

The room was darkened, all the shades pulled from the windows so the starlight wouldn't intrude. The only light came from a lamp by the bed.

"Madame President," he addressed her, standing formally at attention just inside the door, and she lifted her eyes up to him and smiled softly.

"Commander Adama," Roslin replied just as formally, and her smile widened. "I thought you hated ceremony."

There were any number of things he hated, but he couldn't find the words to articulate any of them as his throat constricted painfully at the sight of her. Nothing but echoes remained of the vibrancy, steel, and resolve, and the lines of pain were etched deeply on her face. Her body made barely a bump in the blanket tucked up under her armpits, and the tendons of her neck stood out against slack skin.

"Madame President, all due respect…" He lost the words again, and instead found himself crowded by all the ones he'd never uttered over the years.

"I know," she said softly, filling in the silence he'd left.

They watched each other across the room until she looked down at her lap, at the book her left hand was holding open.

"I've been trying to finish…no, to start, really…do you remember when you lent me Dark Day?"

"I didn’t lend it to you," Adama corrected gently, and in that he found the strength to walk across the room. There was a chair already positioned by the side of the bed so that it faced her, and he sat in it, concentrating on the simple motions. "It was a gift."

That earned him another smile, and she shifted her hand on the book listlessly. He found himself oddly attentive to the sound of paper scratching against skin.

"I started it when you first gave it to me," Roslin confessed, and if possible her voice was even quieter. "I didn't get very far then, and after that there was never time…" She rolled her head to the right, away from him and toward the shuttered window. "Never time," she repeated. "Never enough time."

He reached across and took the book from her, open to page forty-seven out of nearly four hundred. "Where did you leave off?"

"Girardi had just left the café," she said, rolling her head back to look at him, studying him, and for some reason the intensity of her gaze made him feel bare and raw.

He cleared his throat and held the book with his right hand, thumb between the pages to keep it open. "We still have some time."

His left hand found her left hand, delicate as a bird's, skin loose around brittle bones, and he was gentle in curling his fingers around hers. Her dark eyes flicked down to their joined hands, then back to his, and then closed, a smile drifting across her lips.

Adama began to read, following Girardi through the streets of Caprica City, and through his voice they became alive and prosperous again, not the nuclear wasteland they must be in reality. He described the riverwalk and the parks, the ships soaring overhead and the graceful glass buildings.

He lost himself in the words and the memories of his home city, and almost didn't notice that she squeezed his hand, the grip was so weak. "Madame President?" he queried, lowering the book.

"Take care of them for me," she pleaded – more like breathed and hoped the words would form in her mouth, so little energy she put into them.

"I'm afraid I don't understand," he lied - because he did, he understood all too well.

"Bill," Roslin chided, and using his given name carried with it the force of a full-throated order. "Please."

"Of course," he promised, refraining from telling her he would anyway, because she knew that. She needed the reassurance, needed her longstanding ally to say the words aloud and set her mind at ease.

Somewhere she found the strength to raise her fingertips to his cheek and he sat very still, very aware of the paper under his thumb and her fingers still cradled in his palm and her cool, thin fingertips tracing his cheekbone. "Never enough time," she repeated, and as she lowered her hand the movement was full of the grace of the old days.

Adama bowed his head and began reading again.

Against the backdrop of his voice her breathing slowed and thinned, and the warmth fled from her hands. His throat closed up and he read more deliberately, matching his breathing to hers unconsciously, willing each compression of her lungs.

Finally, she was still.

Adama closed the book and looked at her face, stripped of its beauty but not its dignity. He placed the book on her stomach and untangled his fingers from hers, placing her hand on the book with infinite care.

Reaching across her body, he opened the shade on the window to the starfield beyond, and leaned down to kiss her forehead.

"Goodbye, Laura," he whispered.


End file.
